With this ridiculous news that the Eagles may be interested in Brett Favre, I suppose it’s obligatory that I make reference to it. So, in honor of the patron saint of the int return, here’s a post about interception returns for touchdown (plus other types of non-offensive touchdowns and how often teams win when they get one).

This idea (well, without Favre reference) comes courtesy of Carrington Harrison from 610 sports radio, but you don’t have to work in radio, owe me money or be an immediate family member to suggest a topic.

I went back over the last decade, and here are the winning percentages when a team scores each type of non-offensive touchdown:

TOUCHDOWN TYPE

W

L

WIN PCT

INTERCEPTION RETURN

415

103

0.801

MISSED FG RETURN

3

1

0.750

FUMBLE RETURN

168

77

0.686

BLOCKED PUNT RETURN

21

12

0.636

PUNT RETURN

90

53

0.629

BLOCKED FG RETURN

10

7

0.588

KICKOFF RETURN

87

70

0.554

Teams that have an interception return touchdown win about 80% of their games, while teams with a kickoff return win about 55%. Does this somehow mean that teams should strive for the former rather than the latter? No. It means that interception return touchdowns tend to occur with a team already in the lead, and they are correlated with victory, while we know that kickoff return touchdowns (with the exception of those starting the half) occur after the other team has just scored.

To illustrate this, here’s a breakdown of the score situation when the non-offensive touchdown occurred, showing the percentage of games when the scoring team already had the lead, when they took the lead with the non-offensive touchdown, and when they were still trailing after the score.

Touchdown Type

already leading

took lead/tied

still trailing

INTERCEPTION RETURN

61.4%

30.5%

8.1%

MISSED FG RETURN

50.0%

50.0%

0.0%

FUMBLE RETURN

50.6%

16.7%

32.7%

BLOCKED PUNT RETURN

24.2%

45.5%

30.3%

PUNT RETURN

42.7%

44.1%

13.3%

BLOCKED FG RETURN

17.6%

47.1%

35.3%

KICKOFF RETURN

24.2%

49.0%

26.8%

Only 8.1% of interception return touchdowns over the last decade occur in situations where the intercepting team is down by 8 or more. Teams holding a lead force fewer throws and generate far fewer interception return opportunities. On the other hand, blocked punt returns, blocked field goal returns, and kickoff returns have occurred more often when the team is trailing by more than one score.